As shown in FIGS. 1 and 2, a conventional picture frame for displaying favorite picture comprises a frame 10A, a transparent layer 20A such as glass, plastic, or acrylic mounted therebehind and a background plate 30A mounted behind the transparent layer 20A. The background plate 30A has a size equal to or larger than the transparent layer 20A so as to define a receiving room therebetween for keeping a picture or art work P. Generally, the frame 10A is a quadrilateral frame comprising a first, a second, a third and a fourth elongated side strip side strips 11A, 12A, 13A, 14A that each of which has a L-shaped cross section to define a cavity 15A bounded by the four side strips 11A, 12A, 13A, 14A. The frame 10A further provides a plurality of background plate holders 16A, 17A, 18A, 19A integrally extended from the four side strips 11A, 12A, 13A, 14A of the frame 10A respectively.
The assembly procedure of the conventional picture frame 11A is so troublesome that includes the following steps of:
1) mounting the transparent layer 20A on the cavity 15A bounded by the four side strips 11A, 12A, 13A, 14A of the frame 10A; PA1 2) placing a picture or art work P on the transparent layer 20A; PA1 3) placing the background plate 30A behind the picture or art work P; and PA1 4) locking the background plate 30A, the picture or artwork P and the transparent layer 20A in position by the background plate holders 16A, 17A, 18A, 19A.
The above described convention picture frame 10A has been used for years to preserve and display the picture or art work of what you are proud of, but it still contains many drawbacks that should be improved to make it become more user friendly.
One of the drawbacks is that the conventional picture frame is not easy for the user to either insert or remove the picture therein, the user needs to perform all four steps mentioned above, and that the background plate 30A is very tough to be correctly positioned and bounded by the background plate holders 16A, 17A, 18A, 19A.
The conventional picture frame is not design for frequent change of the displaying picture or art work, so it does not consider making that task simple. But most people would like to change different pictures or art works from time to time or after a while of seeing the same old things. As mentioned above in procedure 3), even if the user can correctly position and bound the background plate 30A by the background plate holders 16A, 17A, 18A, 19A on top of the picture or art work P, when the user wants to replace the picture, or art work, most users may find difficulty of taking out the background plate 30A since it is firmly bounded by the background plate holders 16A, 17A, 18A, 19A. When the user tries to do such task with too much force, the background plate holders 16A, 17A, 18A, 19A have a tendency to break off from the four side strips 11A, 12A, 13A, 14A and the whole frame becomes unusable.
Another shortcoming of the conventional picture frame is that the picture P is bounded by the four side strips 11A, 12A, 13A, 14A so as to hold the picture P in position within the frame 10A, in other words, the four side strips 11A, 12A, 13A, 14A of the picture frame 10A forms a border of the picture P that often makes the people focusing on the surrounding frame rather than the picture itself. Also, since all conventional picture frames come with preset color and ornamental design, the user might need to spend long time on selecting the right style of picture frame picture to match with the content of the picture due to the fact that if it is not properly match, the frame would ruin the artistic aspect of the picture. For most circumstances, the picture itself is the dominant feature to displace but not the frame.